Homebrewed Christianity

WIKI-sermon help: John 3

My friend is preaching this weekend in a place where they have heard it all before. She has been given John 3 as a text and has asked for some fresh ideas / language about “beginning to participate in the kingdom of God”.

I threw out the following three ideas but thought that a wiki-approach might be really helpful – I am a big fan of the collaborative approach.

Look into “prolepsis” as an ancient literary device. Don’t let them tell you it was simply foreshadowing. Wolfhart Pannenberg talks about Jesus as a proleptic event.

So the church is not the kingdom. The church is NOT the kingdom come. The church does not usher in the kingdom (post-millennial). Only God can bring the kingdom.
The church is a response – a group of people responding to and imitating what was revealed in God’s proleptic event.
Jesus is a picture of how it will be when God comes in fullness.

You could also pair this with something like Stanley Hauerwas in chapter 6-7 of “Peaceable Kingdom” where he says that the church (who he agrees is not the kingdom) is a group of people who live lives in such a way that they are worthy (have the right to) tell the story. We tell the story with our lives and this is crucial! … for the church is the world’s only opportunity for the world to figure out that it is the world! By showing the face of Christ we become like a mirror where the world sees itself AS the world (in contrast to Christ).

or

you could focus on the fact that in the Bible, where it says that we are Ambassadors for Christ (reconciliation) that (according to seminary friends) the word ambassador is actually a verb. We are ambassador-ing – for that which we are VERBING is not our own work , it is God’s work and that which God alone has done (and can do). We are simply VERBING what has been done on our behalf – it does not originate with us or culminate with us … we simply play our part as ambassador-ings.